I don’t believe in the deity of Mary nor the saints. This one will require further explanation. If a young child asks how God can hear millions of people pray at the same time, our likely answer will be because He is God, He is deity. But I find no answer how Mary or the saints could possess this omnipotent power, except to deify them, which I am compelled to reject.

Jesus has only God as Father. "He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures."

Devotion to Mary goes back a long way in the Catholic church. But Catholics do not believe that Mary is divine and we don’t pray to Mary. God, made flesh in Jesus and present in the Holy Spirit, is the only One to whom we pray.

We do believe that Mary holds a special place among the saints of the church, and that the saints are part of a community of faith and love that doesn't end with death. This “communion of saints” includes both the living and dead. We don’t “pray to” the saints either, but we believe that we can ask those who now live with God to pray for us, just as we pray for persons who have died.

Catholics don’t worship Mary; rather, we honor her. We honor Mary as the mother of God, as the first disciple of Jesus, and as the mother of the church. All three of these titles have their origins in the fact that in Mary’s life the Word of God became flesh and blood and that is the vocation to which every Christian is called — to live in such a way that God’s generous compassion becomes alive in our flesh and blood, in in our words and actions.

We look to Mary as a model in whom we can trust, and as a mother who supports and nurtures our own journeys of faith. Turning to her as the first of Christians, we ask her to pray for us.

As Scripture indicates, those in heaven are aware of the prayers of those on earth. This can be seen, for example, in Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." But if the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they must be aware of our prayers. They are aware of our petitions and present them to God by interceding for us.

Some might try to argue that in this passage the prayers being offered were not addressed to the saints in heaven, but directly to God. Yet this argument would only strengthen the fact that those in heaven can hear our prayers, for then the saints would be aware of our prayers even when they are not directed to them!

In any event, it is clear from Revelation 5:8 that the saints in heaven do actively intercede for us. We are explicitly told by John that the incense they offer to God are the prayers of the saints. Prayers are not physical things and cannot be physically offered to God. Thus the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally. In other words, they are interceding.

...

Some objections to the concept of prayer to the saints betray restricted notions of heaven. One comes from anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner:

"How, then, can a human being such as Mary hear the prayers of millions of Roman Catholics, in many different countries, praying in many different languages, all at the same time?

"Let any priest or layman try to converse with only three people at the same time and see how impossible that is for a human being. . . . The objections against prayers to Mary apply equally against prayers to the saints. For they too are only creatures, infinitely less than God, able to be at only one place at a time and to do only one thing at a time.

"How, then, can they listen to and answer thousands upon thousands of petitions made simultaneously in many different lands and in many different languages? Many such petitions are expressed, not orally, but only mentally, silently. How can Mary and the saints, without being like God, be present everywhere and know the secrets of all hearts?" (Roman Catholicism, 142-143).

If being in heaven were like being in the next room, then of course these objections would be valid. A mortal, unglorified person in the next room would indeed suffer the restrictions imposed by the way space and time work in our universe. But the saints are not in the next room, and they are not subject to the time/space limitations of this life.

This does not imply that the saints in heaven therefore must be omniscient, as God is, for it is only through God’s willing it that they can communicate with others in heaven or with us. And Boettner’s argument about petitions arriving in different languages is even further off the mark. Does anyone really think that in heaven the saints are restricted to the King’s English? After all, it is God himself who gives the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Surely those saints in Revelation understand the prayers they are shown to be offering to God.

The problem here is one of what might be called a primitive or even childish view of heaven. It is certainly not one on which enough intellectual rigor has been exercised. A good introduction to the real implications of the afterlife may be found in Frank Sheed’s book Theology and Sanity, which argues that sanity depends on an accurate appreciation of reality, and that includes an accurate appreciation of what heaven is really like. And once that is known, the place of prayer to the saints follows.

Some may grant that the previous objections to asking the saints for their intercession do not work and may even grant that the practice is permissible in theory, yet they may question it on other grounds, asking why one would want to ask the saints to pray for one. "Why not pray directly to Jesus?" they ask.

The answer is: "Of course one should pray directly to Jesus!" But that does not mean it is not also a good thing to ask others to pray for one as well. Ultimately, the "go-directly-to-Jesus" objection boomerangs back on the one who makes it: Why should we ask any Christian, in heaven or on earth, to pray for us when we can ask Jesus directly? If the mere fact that we can go straight to Jesus proved that we should ask no Christian in heaven to pray for us then it would also prove that we should ask no Christian on earth to pray for us.

Here's to hoping Pastor Pete, and others like him, are prayerfully considering each of these responses, not, unless God wills it, so that they might become Catholic but minimally so that they might know more about what has become for me a deep and so very rich faith.

Monday, January 19, 2015

I've been slowly, since the first of the year, responding to Pastor Pete's stated objections to Catholicism, objections sent to me via email and those he agreed to allow me, as best I can, to answer here on the blog.

I've tagged the series in the Plainly Answering Pastor Pete category (you can skim what's been responded to thus far by starting at the bottom of the link and working your way to the top).

What follows is yet another of Pastor Pete's objection (and his subsequent expounding):

I don’t believe in transubstantiation (i.e. “the bread and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become, not merely as by a sign or a figure, but also in actual reality the body and blood of Christ.”) Here’s a funny story (at least to me). I was talking with a Catholic friend a long time ago about communion. I had totally gotten the Catholic perspective wrong. I thought they believed that it literally turned into flesh and blood. I teased and told him to go take communion and when he came back I would stick my finger down his throat and we would see what came up, bread and wine, or flesh and blood. LOL I now understand that the doctrine is not literal. I am assuming that it is meant to be understood spiritually. I am guessing it helps worshippers to feel part of the mystical body of Christ. However, it doesn’t make sense to me. Aren’t Catholics always a part of the body of Christ, even if they for whatever reason haven’t had communion for a while. My thoughts: I believe that communion is an indispensible church rite that affects or can affect worshippers in a profound spiritual way. In fact, I believe that when taken by faith it has the effect of strengthening or re-strengthening (not sure the best use of words here) the bond we have with Christ. I guess in a way if reaffirms in the heart of the believer who they belong to (again, not sure the best way to describe.) But to say “the bread and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become, not merely as by a sign or a figure, but also in actual reality the body and blood of Christ” is untenable to me. And another point: Suppose I believe that communion is purely symbolic (which I don’t) and suppose I take communion with all the faith humanly possible and yet don’t know or understand that God may do more in the spiritual realm than I realize, does my lack of understanding prevent God from blessing me more fully (spiritually). I don’t believe it does. I’m sure that many catholic’s have no depth of understand of what may or may not take place spiritually when they take communion, but the fact that they take it by faith symbolically or otherwise is what matters. I don’t see the need to divide people (i.e. differentiate true believers from non-true believers) on this point. But my lack of belief in transubstantiation as I understand it disqualifies me to be a catholic – correct?

There is no real way, in a single post, to deal with the subject at hand in a comprehensive way. There simply isn't. What I can do however is first have the reader (and hopefully Pastor Pete) watch what follows, something that I think gives an excellent introductory perspective to the notion of The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist:

Key take-aways:

John 6 quite forcefully gives the Scriptural basis sought to support the notion of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It's revealing and telling that Christ sought not to explain away what he had to say as something merely symbolic but that in effect he doubled down on his teaching even after some of his followers could not accept it.

The early Church, through the first 1,000 years, believed in the notion of the Real Presence with such stalwarts as St. Augustine, St. Ephraim, St. Irenaeus and St. Justin Martyr being in full support.

God desires union with us and it is through the Eucharist that He unites with us and us with Him.

And the more I read Scripture and church history, the more convinced I became that it was. For Jesus wasn't kidding around when he said, "This is my body. This is my blood." Yes, the Sacrament is symbolic. Even the Catholic Church says so. My mistake, as an Evangelical, was to try to insist that it was only symbolic. But from Jesus (who said, "This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world" (John 6:51)) to Paul (who warned the Corinthians that in receiving Eucharist unworthily they would be "sinning against the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:27)) to a host of Fathers, saints, martyrs, virgins, theologians, and doctors of the church, the resounding cry was unanimous: Eucharist was not only symbolic. It was, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch (a man who heard St. John the Apostle with his own ears), "the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ" (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans). This was why St. John Chrysostom, echoing the unanimous Faith of the first thousand years of the Church, declared of Eucharist: "When you see it exposed, say to yourself: Thanks to this body, I am no longer dust and ashes, I am no more captive but a free man." Indeed, he boldly states, "This is that body which was once covered with blood, pierced by a lance, from which issued saving fountains upon the world, one of blood and the other of water" (Commentary on Corinthians).

In short, I discovered it was my Evangelical "mere symbolism" approach that was the new kid on the block. It was the Catholic picture that was the clear outgrowth of the biblical and patristic data. The Eucharist really was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It was not only beautiful, it was true and rooted as deeply in the apostolic teaching as the Resurrection. And that was why I came to believe in it and in the rest of the teaching of the Church. Beauty, practicality, comfort, happiness and the rest were glad bonuses, to be sure. But it was truth that won me.

I hope this post serves not as an end-all to Pastor Pete's (and anybody else's) objections but as an appetizer of sorts to seek more on this.

There is much out there and much I've covered already on the blog (go here, here or here for starters).

Friday, January 16, 2015

The place to begin is not in the minutiae but in establishing whether the Church has authority and is trustworthy. If one settles that question in the affirmative, the rest is about conforming our will to God's.

It's with that in mind that I link to Fr. Longenecker's latest piece on the importance and relevance of Apostolic Succession when defending the Catholic faith from its detractors:

Whenever I am involved in conversations with non-Catholic Christians I go straight to the authority question. If that question is not resolved then every other discussion is only matter of swapping opinions.

It is important, therefore to be clear on the basics of the Catholic understanding of authority.

It is rooted in the fact that Jesus Christ was sent by God and had all authority on heaven and earth. (Mt 22:18)

Jesus exercised this authority by 1. Teaching the truth 2. Healing the sick 3. Vanquishing the Devil. He told his apostles to continue this work. (Mt. 22:19)

He delegated that authority to his apostles because he said, “As the Father has sent me I am sending you.” (Jn 20:21)

The apostles appointed their successors who are the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church.

This is why Catholic priests and the Catholic faithful need to be true to the teachings of the Catholic faith. Without it we are simply trading in our own opinions. When we contradict church teachings, dissent from Church teachings we are taking ourselves outside the line of authority and our views–no matter how seemingly reasonable and no matter how passionately we hold them–are dust in the wind.

They have no more authority or weight than anyone else’s opinions. You may argue your point and rage against the authority of the church, but step outside it and you are on your own.

The analogy I use is that of the barque of Peter. Launch out on your own and your on the wild and wide open sea in little more than a self inflated life raft.

The barque of Peter may be an old ship. She may be creaky and leaky at times. She may have troubles in the engine room and the cargo in the hold may be rotting, but she’s still more seaworthy than your own little lifeboat, and even though she may be tossed about by the winds and stormy seas she’ll make it to the port at last.

I don’t believe that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus and I don’t see any reason to hold that view in order to be saved from eternal damnation and be catholic. She obviously needed to be a virgin at the conception of Jesus in order to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah concerning the virgin birth of Jesus. The Bible definitely refers to Jesus’ brothers and sisters, despite attempts to explain them away. So what if she was intimate with Joseph after Jesus’ birth. I say good for her and good for Joseph. Marital intimacy is a God given blessing. It isn’t something to look down on as immoral or some sort of human imperfection. It is something to praise God for. So unless there is some reason that escapes me, I don’t see the reason to divide people (i.e. differentiate true believers from non-true believers) on this point.

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the "Ever-virgin".

500 Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, "brothers of Jesus", are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls "the other Mary". They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.

The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term "brethren." The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as "brethren." The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Today most Protestants are unaware of these early beliefs regarding Mary’s virginity and the proper interpretation of "the brethren of the Lord." And yet, the Protestant Reformers themselves—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored the perpetual virginity of Mary and recognized it as the teaching of the Bible, as have other, more modern Protestants.

For most of Christian history, Mary’s Perpetual Virginity was a commonplace belief, even well into the Protestant Reformation. But in our hyper-sexualized culture— and, like it or not, this is the culture in which Christians and non-Christians are now submerged like fish in the sea—people find it extremely difficult to contemplate the possibility of a life of virginity as anything but one of unbearable deprivation. So before we ever get to discussing what Scripture says, we’ve got a gigantic cultural hostility to virginity to overcome.

Moreover, of course, our cultural biases aren’t confined to sex. Many card-carrying members of our consumer culture will wonder why anyone would choose to believe in something like Mary’s Perpetual Virginity. Behind such thinking is the notion of the Catholic faith as a mere smorgasbord of “belief options” that are there to accessorize our fashion choices. And so, conventional wisdom says: If you’re one of those strange souls who “like” virginity, then you can choose to believe in Mary’s Perpetual Virginity because it “suits your lifestyle.” But if you’re not one of these odd ducks, then why bother believing it?

The answer is that the Catholic faith is not a product of consumer culture. It proposes certain truths to us, not because they suit our lifestyle, but because they’re true.

The perpetual virginity of Mary, a proposed truth believed in by the likes of Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Epiphanius of Salamis, Didymus the Blind, Augustine, Leporius, Cyril of Alexandria (and the Protestant Reformers already mentioned), is indeed, as Pastor Pete has opined, not something to divide over.

The real question is... why are some insistent on their disbelief of this truth?

If, as Pastor Pete suggests, we are disqualified to be Catholic, we are disqualified only by our unwillingness to see and recognize authority outside of ourselves.

Amen?

UPDATE: A cyber-friend of mine made the sound argument that I had left unanswered Pastor Pete's objections to the Catholic notion that Mary and Joseph were never intimate, particularly in light of Pastor Pete's rightly expressed opinion that God blesses marital sexual union. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it “noble and honorable,” established by God so that spouses can “experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit.” (#2362).

Answering Pastor Pete's objection lies in first coming to understand how Catholics see Mother Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.

What would have been so horrible about her and Joseph enjoying the intimacy God provided for a married couple?

It's not that it would have been horrible -- indeed, it is good for a man to know his wife in this sense. In Catholic teaching, however, there are two other things at play here: the notion of sacrifice, and piety with respect to the holy. When we sacrifice things, we sacrifice good things. This goes for burnt offerings and little penances alike. When, for instance, a monk or a nun take vows of poverty and chastity, it isn't because sex and wealth aren't good things -- indeed, they are! But the spiritual good is better than the temporal good, and they are choosing, out of love of God, to give certain things up to seek further spiritual nourishment.

Piety and reverence to the holy is something that in the Catholic/Orthodox do a bit different than other traditions. For instance, traditionally the vessels of consecration, the tabernacle, the altar, etc. are all veiled. Women, traditionally, veil their head in prayer, particularly in the presence of the blessed sacrament. The veiling hides them from plain sight, not because they are bad, but because they are holy and beautiful. Joseph abstained from relations with Mary because she was the tabernacle -- she contained Jesus within her. She was the ultimate sacred vessel -- the Theotokos -- who bore God. Out of reverence, awe, respect, and love, he had forgone relations with her.

It makes so much sense... does it not?

UPDATE II: I've put up a new post I'm making a part of the series. It doesn't respond to any of Pastor Pete's objections in a particular sense however, I think it applies to them all in a more general sense. Go here and partake.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

Welcome to the third in a series of posts dealing with objections to the Catholic faith sent to me by an old friend who happens also to be Pastor of a Protestant church (we're calling him Pastor Pete for purposes of the series).

The two initial posts can be read here and here and I encourage you to read them both.

I've spent quite a bit of time researching how best to respond to the gist of Pastor Pete's initial objection (the first of 6 sent me) and had lined up numerous links and published pieces that I thought would best defend the dogma of Mary's Assumption but then came across a post put up just a few short months ago and thought, why re-invent the wheel.

While the dogma was only made definitive by Pope Pius XII in 1950 (Munificentissimus Deus), the tradition of Mary’s assumption after her death at Ephesus is an old, old one that, as demonstrated by early-fourth century Ethiopian apocrypha (Liber Requiei Mariae (The Book of Mary’s Repose), pre-dates the Bible.

But I’m not interested in apologetics or in re-arguing sola scriptura, an idea which, ironically enough, is also not found in scripture. I believe in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary not because my church tells me to, or because I am particularly pious. I believe it because of scripture and science, and frankly, for me science has the edge in the argument, because of microchimerism. I’ve written about this these past four years; learning that every child leaves within his mother a microscopic bit of himself — and that it remains within her forever — made the dogma of the Assumption a no-brainer for me.

And so my heart rejoices, my soul is glad;even my body shall rest in safety.For you will not leave my soul among the dead,nor let your Holy One know decay.

Christ’s divine body did not undergo corruption. It follows that his mother’s body, which forever contained a cellular component of the Divinity — and a particle of God is God, entire — would not be allowed to corrupt as well, but would be taken into heaven and reunited with Christ. Mary was a created creature and moral. But she was no mere mortal; she could not be, once the particles of God had entered her chemistry.

I hope you (and of course Pastor Pete) will read her entire piece as it also links to a post by Msgr. Charles Pope covering the biblical roots of the Assumption and, on a related aside, delves into why we as Catholics yearn for the Eucharist where we get to "share a small portion of Mary’s larger reality".

Friday, January 02, 2015

A few days ago I promised to respond, in a series of posts, to objections to the Catholic faith communicated to me by a Pastor friend. The initial post can be read here and I highly recommend reading it for context and framing. This post is in essence the second in the series and the first to deal directly with one of the numerous objections (though due to length, only in part) Pastor Pete communicated to me in email. Here's his relevant objection, his first of six sent to me that day:

I don’t believe in the assumption of Mary. The doctrine was not even official Catholic doctrine until November 1, 1950. This is church dogma. I may be confused by what Catholic Church means by dogma. I assume it means those things are non-negotiable matters of faith. Doesn’t one have to accept church dogma or risk not truly being Catholic? I can only assume that a great many Catholics (ancient as well as more modern) denied this doctrine before November 1, 1950. What about them? Are they retroactively excommunicated? What about current Catholics that don’t hold to this doctrine? Are they really Catholics or do they just think they are and won’t find out until after they are dead that they got this one wrong and are bound for hell? My view of Mary disqualifies me – correct?

88 The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a formobliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

89 There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith.

The bolded words (above and below) are my own doing, attempting to place emphasis on that which I believe has relevance to my attempt to adequately respond to Pastor Pete.

Now let's move on to doctrines and particularly this Catholic Exchange piece (read the whole thing for further illumination) that I think does a great job of defining and differentiating terms:

A doctrine is a teaching of the universal Church proposed as necessary for belief by the faithful. Dogmas, properly speaking, are such teachings that are set forth to be believed as divinely revealed (Catechism, no. 88; cf. 891-892). When differentiating from dogma, we use the term “doctrine” to signify teachings that are either definitively proposed or those that are proposed as true, but not in a definitive manner (cf. Catechism, nos. 88, 891-92).

Summarizing then, all dogmas are doctrines (Church teachings), but not all doctrines are dogmas (divinely revealed Church teachings). Both are deemed such by the Magisterium (Pope and the Bishops) and are then, by definition, binding on the faithful Catholic as to an obligation of the faith. Which brings us to the touchy subject of excommunication.

My personal take-away from both links, to directly respond to Pastor Pete's questions, are that excommunications can only be applied to living persons and that, given what we've learned from the definition of terms provided by the relevant links, any Catholic who willfully denies any doctrine, and in this case, a dogma, of the Church has in essence automatically excommunicated themselves.

I love this particular and revealing portion of the EWTN post:

The person who holds something contrary to the Catholic faith is materially a heretic. They possess the matter of heresy, theological error. Thus, prior to the Second Vatican Council it was quite common to speak of non-Catholic Christians as heretics, since many of their doctrines are objectively contrary to Catholic teaching. This theological distinction remains true, though in keeping with the pastoral charity of the Council today we use the term heretic only to describe those who willingly embrace what they know to be contrary to revealed truth. Such persons are formally (in their conscience before God) guilty of heresy. Thus, the person who is objectively in heresy is not formally guilty of heresy if 1) their ignorance of the truth is due to their upbringing in a particular religious tradition (to which they may even be scrupulously faithful), and 2) they are not morally responsible for their ignorance of the truth. This is the principle of invincible ignorance, which Catholic theology has always recognized as excusing before God.

Clearly not believing, as a Catholic, a divinely revealed truth (dogma) is serious however, I take great comfort in knowing that the Church sees excommunication (whether formal or informal) as something much less than permanent, and something from which the excommunicated can come out from under, assuming they take the necessary steps to do so. And frankly, I think it quite revealing that formal excommunications are rare.

In closing, for this post, I want to directly address (and yes, I'm aware we've not yet dealt with the dogma of Mother Mary's Assumption), Pastor Pete's suggestion that the (logically) excommunicated are bound for hell.

I look to the example of the thief aside Christ on the cross who asks to be remembered in Christ's kingdom and Jesus' merciful promise of paradise to the dying man. Excommunication is a disciplinary tactic used by the Church to draw people back to God's mercy. It is not a direct pathway to Hell. The person excommunicated is always allowed the wriggle room necessary to repent and turn back to that mercy. Thanks be to God.

I'll end this second post of the Pastor Pete series by promising to directly deal with Mother Mary's assumption in the next related post so please, do stay tuned and please, do leave your comments and add to the discussion.

Thursday, January 01, 2015

I received an email from an old friend yesterday on the cusp of the new year ushering in old arguments against Catholicism but done so in what I'm choosing to trust is in a spirit of honest inquiry.

This friend, now a pastor of a non-denominational church, and I go back a long way, working together for two different employers more than 20 years ago. We've kept in touch largely through social media over these many years and I consider him to be a person of integrity and a man who sincerely and genuinely loves the Lord.

He began his email with a simple question.

"I am disqualified to be a Catholic, correct?"and went on to outline numerous objections to Catholicism that he clearly believes bolsters the premise for his question. I wrote him back and asked if he would have a problem with my turning his questions, and my responses, into blog posts, hoping that not only he would come away at least knowing more about Catholicism but that, God willing, others who read our exchange might do the same.

He agreed.

So over the next few days and probably more like weeks, I'll be putting up Pastor Pete's (not his real name) objections to the Catholic faith and attempting to answer them as best I can with the following caveat.

I'm no theologian. I'm a revert who was away from the Catholic Church for nearly 40 years.

Despite the fact that I've slept at a Holiday Inn Express numerous times, I'm not going to pretend that I'm the end-all for every Catholic teaching. My hope instead is to find and use what I hope are clearly authoritative resources to answer the objections. And of course I welcome my small cadre of loyal readers (Catholic or otherwise) to weigh in with comments and add to the discussion.

What I want to do up front for Pastor Pete however in this post is set the tone by answering his opening question in a way I hope will not come across as condescending.

I think the word disqualified in the question has unintentionally negative connotations. It suggests that those who want to enter the Catholic Church must first become aware of and adhere to belief in every doctrine, teaching or dogma before becoming a faithful member and I believe that to be impractical to say the least. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is over 900 pages long and though we covered lots of ground in our Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) class, we did not together read the entire Catechism. What we instead did was hit the highlights and more importantly, spent a lot of time learning and understanding the authority God passed to the Church.

If we're going to come down to a single question as to whether one should genuinely consider becoming Catholic or not, I say we boil it down to making an informeddecision on whether or not we're willing to entertain the notion that the Church is more authoritative on all things having to do with Jesus Christ than we as individuals are.

I have made the personal decision, one based on study and based on faith, that she is. This has been admittedly difficult at times but I've come to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in and through the Catholic Church.

If, as Pastor Pete suggests, we are disqualified to be Catholic, we are disqualified only by our unwillingness to see and recognize authority outside of ourselves.

With that I'll end this post but not before revealing that the next one in the series will deal with Pastor Pete's problems with the Assumption of Mary.

Staty tuned.

UPDATE: Hours after I published this post, I came across Pope Francis' homily delivered today at St. Peter's Basilica, a homily with words I think add some frosting if you will, some seasoning, to what I had to say earlier. Heck... who am I kidding... he's the Pope, and what he had to say is the meat, the full course, of what I was attempting to weakly say in part. I put up a separate post on it, not exactly part of my series here, more like an extension of this first post. Do check it out.

UPDATE II: The second post in the series has been published and can be found here.